Page 50 of Into the Fire

“I’ve been so focused on surviving I haven’t given much thought to what I’m going back to,” Max said. “Or what I’m not going back to.”

Evan remembered his first time on a shooting range. Jack’s callused grip encasing his twelve-year-old hands, shaping them around the pistol stock, showing him how to aim. What would Evan aim at once he left the Nowhere Man behind?

He kept on across the parking lot, stepping around the shattered brown hull of a forty-ounce. “Maybe it’s time to start.”

Max said, “I still can’t believe it’s really over.”

Neither can I.

Evan signed off and put the phone away. He aimed the key fob at the Chevy Malibu, and the car responded with the double chirp of a mating call. As he reached for the door, the shrill ring of an old-fashioned telephone broke the silence. The sound was so out of place here in the dark parking lot that Evan had to register the vibration in his cargo pocket to realize it was coming from the phone he’d just hung up.

He took the Turing Phone out again. Caller ID showed: UNIDENTIFIED CALLER.

Evan clicked to answer and held the slab of rare metal to his cheek.

“The Merriweather job isn’t done.” The accent was hard to place. Maybe Armenian, maybe Georgian, the consonants slow and the vowels deep, forced through gravel.

Evan paused with his hand hooked under the cold metal of the door handle. He felt his flesh sitting heavy on his bones, the weight of exhaustion. He’d been awake for two days, shot at and chased, tackled and punched, bitten and clawed. He’d wanted the mission to be over, and that wanting had obscured his clarity.

Unidentified Caller was an unknown threat. A moving target. Another mask sliding forward to front a faceless enterprise.

“No,” Evan agreed. “I thought it was. But I guess not yet.”

He could hear the man breathing across the line. “I know what you did, boy. You interceded on his behalf. You put down Terzian and his men.” He sounded older, into his fifties at least. The words held the dead calm of a man accustomed to dealing with challenging circumstances.

Evan did not like the sensation spreading like acid in his stomach. That he’d underestimated the situation. That he was up against something more complex and dangerous than he’d anticipated. That things were about to get a whole lot worse.

“Who are you?” the man asked.

“Don’t worry,” Evan said. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Sooner than you think,” the man said.

Evan pulled the door open slightly, but something in the man’s voice made him hesitate. Picking his way across the glass-strewn lot with his eyes on the ground, Evan had neglected the Third Commandment. He shot a glance over his shoulder, but the dull yellow glow of the shop windows illuminated only a flurry of moths beating themselves against the glass.

“I don’t know,” Evan said, tugging the car door handle. “I might be harder to track down than you think.”

“Oh,” the man said, “I don’t need to track you. I just need to track the dog you rescued.”

A snap of breaking glass announced itself from the darkness by the dumpster. Evan just had time to look up over the top of the open car door when a form melted from the pitch-black, arm raised, aiming at Evan’s stomach.

So, he thought. This is it, then.

Muzzle flash strobed, a trio of gut shots slamming into Evan, and he sensed himself suddenly weightless. The asphalt reared up, smacking the back of his head and filling him with blackness.

22

Not Yet

He was dead.

Of that much he was sure.

What he was less sure of was why he still felt a throbbing between the temples, his head pulsing as if preparing to explode.

His eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing right. The stars were wobbly streaks, and the outline of his car, visible over the tips of his boot and his sock, was fuzzy and indistinct. His shirt had tugged up, night air cool against his ribs. One arm was flung overhead as if he were plummeting into the underworld, but his other hand had landed on his belly, which felt smooth and seemingly intact.

Not dead, then.